The American Dream: the 50s (book)

Richard B. Stolley & Time-Life Books editors. The American Dream: The 50s (1998) In Our American Century series. Very Ameri-centric. Touching, in some ways: the T/L editors avoid anything that might seem like taking sides or making moral judgements (with one exception -- see below). Decisions are generally presented as natural events, that just happened. Fallout shelters are shown, but their utter uselessness is not mentioned. The McCarthy era is shown as a Bad Man doing Bad Things, but with no attempt at analysing why McCarthy was so successful for so long. And so on.
     The photos are all interesting, and some are superb. The book is best at conveying the naive optimism of a society that has just discovered the joys of consumerism. The consequences of this lifestyle are a long way off – and the few who are warning about it are shown as endearingly weird avant-garde artists, and therefore not serious critics. In fact, the whole notion of criticism is absent (except in terms of the inexplicably bad people). That the social structure itself might be founded on illusions and lies is never hinted at. I guess when you don't want to take responsibility for the society that you participate in, the only way to explain evil is that it is the result of bad men doing bad things. That social change is an ongoing critique of the past is an idea that one may draw from the evidence of this book, but it is not an idea that it is in the book. A book of great strengths and great weaknesses. **1/2